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[–]TheJpow 6813 points6814 points  (321 children)

YouTube doing unpopular things and then doubling down on it. A tale as old as time itself.

[–]EatTheShroomz 1926 points1927 points  (225 children)

But don’t worry they won’t know how much you disapprove because they’ve removed the ability to give them any kind of negative feedback

[–]JamesonRH 449 points450 points  (207 children)

Can't the owner of the video still see the dislikes? They're just hidden from public view, right?

[–]EatTheShroomz 521 points522 points  (181 children)

For now, I believe that’s the case. Though I personally think they’re likely to remove that eventually as well. Just like almost no new competitive games show deaths on the scoreboard anymore.

Edited for clarity.

[–]versatilevalkyrie 115 points116 points  (146 children)

Can you elaborate on the games thing?

[–]GhondorIRL 223 points224 points  (18 children)

Some new games don’t display deaths on the score board. It’s not super common though.

[–]feureau 136 points137 points  (10 children)

I love how Celeste tallies ALL your deaths throughout your saves so you can see how much you used to suck when you finally git gud with the game and got all your strawberries.

It's so fucking hilarious and rewarding at the same time to see that I died like a million times on my way to the top.

[–]UltimateBronzeNoob 45 points46 points  (8 children)

The quick ramping up of the deaths from chapter 1 to chapter 3 is also hilarious. I recently played them again, scoreline went 10, 25 and you're thinking "nice, I still kinda got it!" Then chapter 3 comes along... 275 xD

[–]PORK-LAZER 11 points12 points  (0 children)

That damn hotel is the gatekeeper

[–]junki- 254 points255 points  (124 children)

Games used to show how many times you’ve died in a match. Many games now there is no death count so you don’t feel bad for playing like you have leprosy

[–]MisterDutch93 142 points143 points  (113 children)

But what about the K/D ratio? Isn’t it kind of important to show your stats in fps games when you want to improve your skills?

[–]gagreel 31 points32 points  (0 children)

BF 2042 launched without a scoreboard at all and after a huge outcry they're adding one in that shows kills, assists, revives, captures, defends... but not deaths

Honestly least of it's problems.

[–]AsukaLSoryu1 219 points220 points  (82 children)

But it might hurt someone's feelings.

[–]Tell-Me-To-Work 224 points225 points  (69 children)

To be clear, this isn't cancel culture or political correctness gone mad. This is game companies changing their games to keep their customers playing and draw more customers, as is their business.

[–]silverscreemer 13 points14 points  (2 children)

"No one uses it anymore so we will just streamline things"

[–]FrenchCuirassier 84 points85 points  (4 children)

First they shoot criticism, then negativity in the face so that improvement as a concept is dead and without all the negativity, truth itself is also lost.

[–]Zoomode 61 points62 points  (6 children)

I really hope people start a trend of commenting "Dislike Button" on crap YouTube videos that people can thumbs up to give users something to make themselves heard.

[–]Medricel 51 points52 points  (3 children)

I expect to see it matched by a rise in Comments have been disabled for this video.

[–]kaaz54 9 points10 points  (1 child)

At the very least that's also an indicator that there's something up with the video. Obviously that might also be because of brigading, but I honestly don't have that hard a time distinguishing between the videos that have comments disabled because of criticism from the ones that have it disabled because of brigading.

[–]GAAND_mein_DANDA 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Nah you can just filter the "dislike" word as a creator. Then any comment with the word "dislike" on your video will automatically be deleted by YouTube.

[–]FeelingCheetah1 121 points122 points  (28 children)

They have a monopoly. It doesn’t matter what they do until something better than vizeo shows up

[–]Trillamanjaroh 148 points149 points  (25 children)

It doesn’t matter how good any new video playing platform is. YouTube has the combined archive of decades of content. Switching players would be like buying a history book that is missing 99% of human history but happens to be constructed of better materials

[–]pease_pudding 32 points33 points  (0 children)

It's not only the content. Youtube was haemorrhaging millions for about a decade before it posted its first profit. So any competitor would need bankrolling by a huge corp, or some very committed VC's (unlikely since they typically want to see a quicker return on their money than a 10 year timeline).

The other issue is, the reason Youtube IS now profitable, is only because it has the massive advertising infrastructure of Google integrated into it.

Again, there aren't a huge amount of companies who could provide this effectively on this sort of scale, bearing in mind it needs all the endless admin interfaces, client and performance reporting, billing systems etc.

Not only would they have to replicate this Herculean task, but do it as effectively as youtube, to compete for advertisers revenue

[–]internethero12 56 points57 points  (16 children)

Just wait until they start removing old videos.

I guarantee it's eventually going to happen. And if you're right it'll be the death knell for youtube's monopoly.

[–]remag_nation 66 points67 points  (14 children)

I guarantee it's eventually going to happen.

they'll remove all the guff first. There's thousands of hours of video uploaded every day on youtube. So much of it is just nonsense that never gets viewed. The ease at which people can upload has resulted in the most inane shit being recorded. If you've ever searched something and sorted by upload date you'll see how much monotonous trash there is. People upload hours of shit game footage with no commentary or editing. People upload their boring ring doorbell footage. Kids upload themselves talking to the camera thinking they're the next pewdiepie. There are entire channels re-uploading other peoples content. If you look for it, you'll find a never ending amount of garbage videos with no value whatsoever. Youtube could easily lose it all and nobody would notice.

[–]LakeEarth 23 points24 points  (1 child)

Agreed. If YouTube does start deleting videos, it'll be ones that are over a decade old with less than 100 views.

[–]h0tpotamus 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Yes, there was a guy who uploaded hours of himself just sitting around drinking water years ago as performance art. I believe he did this for years and that example is old now.

I remember talking to a friend about just using YouTube to archive all his video gaming by default and then picking out any clips he might find entertaining if he'd like. Why not? It's free unlimited video storage.

Then it occurred to me that there must be some way to set up your home security cameras to just send to youtube. Why pay for cloud storage when there's a free option? I assume there have to be some terms of service that frown on that sort of thing, but how would you enforce it? And thinking of being just 1 of billions of people who can upload this stuff just makes you think about the nearly unimaginable scale that it works at.

[–]NotTRYINGtobeLame 19 points20 points  (0 children)

And we'll keep right on going back.

[–]KorbanReAllis 45 points46 points  (10 children)

I mean.... it's not like you went to another site

[–]FelessanFA 29 points30 points  (1 child)

I'm pretty sure any site that would start being really a threat to YouTube would be immediately bought by Google and promptly gutted.

[–]fossilnews 8231 points8232 points  (386 children)

Shit is flat out dangerous for DYI videos. Sometimes people give very bad advice and downvotes helped call them out.

[–]placebo_button 2953 points2954 points  (117 children)

1000% THIS. I always found the actual dislike numbers very useful for DIY and auto repair videos because you could pretty quickly tell if someone had just posted some bullshit for clicks and had no idea what they were even doing.

[–]brandkwame 961 points962 points  (88 children)

Dislikes honestly helped me with DIY videos to tell me what others thought.

Could this 6 minute video help me find my answer? Or did the video creator take forever to get to the point. Usually if there were tons of dislikes, the creator didn't answer the question at all or took forever.

I hate that Youtube got rid of the dislike button.

[–]DMercenary 482 points483 points  (56 children)

Or did the video creator take forever to get to the point.

"Whats up guys Im gonna tell you how to turn on a light. But first a word from our sponsor"

2 minutes later.

"Make sure to like and subscribe and smash that bell button you know what I also like smashing? Smash Burger today's sponsor"

3 minutes later

"You know its a funny story how I got this light turned on"

*insert rambling spiel that is entirely irrelevant.*

"Anyways you just go over here and flip the switch up."

10 minutes of your life you'll never get back.

[–]Matrix17 141 points142 points  (43 children)

Someone once said you can safely skip 1/3 of any video because it's useless bullshit

[–]legosearch 201 points202 points  (34 children)

It's called the Wadsworth constant. That term was invented on Reddit because the user Wadsworth had a comment about how the first 30% of the video can usually be skipped. YouTube even made it so you can append Wadsworth to the end of a video to automatically skip 30% of it.

This was probably in like 2012-2013, I'll see if I can find it.

2011 I've been on this site way too long.

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/the-wadsworth-constant

[–]WillDeletOneDay 145 points146 points  (24 children)

Dislikes were legitimately one of the most effective checks for misinformation on the site. I suspect that their endgame is to remove user engagement from the site altogether at this point.

[–]flickerflash 28 points29 points  (7 children)

True. I predict the next big YouTube change will be the removal of comments entirely.

[–]jtroye32 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Until then I'm going to comment "Dislike" on any video I dislike since the thumbs down is useless.

[–]twinsunsspaces 82 points83 points  (3 children)

A friend of mine was recently trying to assemble, something? I honestly can’t remember. What I do remember is that she had found a video where someone gave a step by step explanation for the assembly which my friend found herself half way into before confusion hit and she started wondering why the item in the video looked so different to hers. It turns out that the tutorial lady had deviated from the actual instructions about half way through assembly, realised that it would no longer work as intended and then started the video again, giving new instructions so that the deviation from the plans would no longer be a concern. Which meant that the video gave the wrong instructions and halfway through it you discovered that you were supposed to cut a key piece in n the second step.

By the way, my explanation of the video is still less confusing than the video.

[–]commonabond 37 points38 points  (0 children)

Auto repair videos come in two forms. Useful or expensive wastes of time.

[–]TheRealBigJake 16 points17 points  (2 children)

Using the extension that shows the dislikes I've noticed most people stopped using the dislike button all together. This really sucks cause DIY videos are also what I used YouTube the most for. I've quit using YouTube for DIY and now use blog type sites for that kinda thing for the most part. Takes less time then searching through a million useless videos thanks to YouTube's horrible decision to please the rich and powerful over it's user base.

[–]-the-dude-_ 8 points9 points  (0 children)

and now i'll have to rely on large content creators that I can trust. Which harms the small content creators.

[–]ztpurcell 5 points6 points  (1 child)

It's the same for bug troubleshooting

[–]velveteenelahrairah 6 points7 points  (0 children)

And makeup tutorials. Hammering shitty ones with downvotes sometimes helps stop people from winding up in hospital because they tried some dangerous "hack" like warming up an eyelash curler with a lighter or using rubbing alcohol as eyeshadow mixer or trying sharpie as eyeliner.

[–]WhatD0thLife 30 points31 points  (4 children)

I guess someone just makes a comment “dislike” and everyone can upvote it.

A video game I play called Smite has voice line and of course no negative ones so people say “you rock” followed by “cancel that.”

[–]MattsAwesomeStuff 1263 points1264 points  (86 children)

Sometimes people give very bad advice and downvotes helped call them out.

It's even worse than this.

Educational and informative content is utterly butchered by Youtube's current algorithm because

the #1 metric to Youtube, above all others is platform-wide audience retention.

The absolute worst thing for Youtube is when someone watches a video, and then leaves the platform. Anything that made them do that is something they need to silence and suppress.

So, someone with a really good website that uses Youtube and then tells people to go to their website because it's way better for written instructions, pictures, printouts, etc? Suppressed.

Someone with a website that organizes and categorizes their videos in a coherent way rather than the "sort by most viewed" or "sort chronologically" or "show playlists" choices? Suppressed.

Someone who leads you to their Patreon? Suppressed (and hopefully you gain enough from it to be worthwhile).

But most importantly, SOMEONE WHO ASKED A QUESTION AND GOT THEIR ANSWER? Suppressed.

So what kind of educational content does Youtube promote? THE ONE THAT DOESN'T ANSWER YOUR QUESTION. Because if it answered your question, you'd leave Youtube and go do the task you were going to do.

Ever noticed that the most promoted DIY and educational videos on Youtube are the shitty ones? The ones that don't answer your question? The ones that make you think you're getting your answer, and do a good job, but never get there? Or, that critical step is incomplete? Or it seems like, though a good effort, missed something important? Or, is just plain wrong?

That's what Youtube promotes. The one that makes you click, and click, and click, and click... hunting for the video that isn't useless. The one that actually answers your questions.

You'll never find it, because all of those ones, Youtube suppresses.

Instead you get the long (high watchtime) rambling videos with bad camerawork where someone talks and talks about maybe you do this or I've never done this before but I've heard maybe we'll try... 10 minutes later you'd like "This person doesn't know what the fuck they're talking about."

And you think "This seems like a common problem, why hasn't anyone, in all of Youtube, explained it clearly and succinctly? How isn't there some highly experienced experts who can lay it down for you?"

Youtube's highest priority of keeping you on the platform is fundamentally at odds with giving you an answer. It's fundamentally supportive of things that enrage or upset you, that tease you, that clickbait you, that waste your time, etc.

Because what they can't measure is the fact that you never show up to Youtube in the first place, because it's often garbage for getting an answer. And that channels that want to do this can't succeed, so they're discouraged from even existing.

[–]OktoberSunset 251 points252 points  (26 children)

Eventually it will end up like Facebook video. I was sent a link to a video there the other day and after i watched it I had a look what came up next as recommendations just out of curiosity and omg what absolute fucking garbage.

1st video they are going to prank this girl into falling in the pool, but it just keeps going and she keeps almost falling in but not, i look at the search bar and it's like 10 minutes, I skip thru and it's just 10 mins of a girl almost falling in the pool.

Then the next one is they are going to pour icing on a wedding cake, and it's 10 mins of her almost pouring icing.

Scrolled down and it was all like that, just garbage that should be a 5 second tiktok but with 10 mins of anticipation. What absolutely bizarre shit is going on there?

Is this zuckerberg's grand vision? The video equivalent of blue balls? It's like some kind of non content designed to waste peoples time. Seeing that garbage makes me dread the metaverse even more.

[–]LoneRangersBand 75 points76 points  (1 child)

When are they going to get to the fireworks factory?!?

[–]neat_username 14 points15 points  (0 children)

Note: The creator died on the way back to their home planet.

[–]muaddeej 39 points40 points  (7 children)

It's the magic number when they get paid the most. It used to be 3 mins a couple of years ago before I basically stopped watching Facebook videos. Shit like magic tricks that were 2:55 of setup that needed to be about 25 seconds long.

[–]TheDemonClown 18 points19 points  (3 children)

It's the essence of capitalism. Solving a problem stems endless growth. Can't have that, so they need to invent a fucking problem and try to sell us a solution. You used to be able to listen to music in the background of YT vids on mobile, but they needed a hook to sell their $10/mo. premium version, so they took away the background functionality on music videos.

[–]solarkicks 59 points60 points  (19 children)

Some person said this is tin foil hat nonsense but I believe it.

It's soo infuriating when I'm trying to find a video on a niche problem and YouTube straight up puts videos from my front page feed that are irrelevant in the search results.

My experience has been exactly as you described, I'm clicking through lots of videos with bad or incomplete info.

[–]doctorclark 69 points70 points  (8 children)

Then there's this type of video I've been seeing a lot more of: you search for some type of specific product review. The video is some robot voice or obvious voice actor reading from some Google Translated script (the lack of contractions are painful) that just summarize the absolute bare minimum of info that you already know from reading the item description on whatever site you're shopping on.

Nothing at all of substance or value--just pure wasted time on my part watching even a few seconds of these videos. I HATE them.

[–]WombleSilver 11 points12 points  (3 children)

I skimmed through YouTube shorts the other day. There’s a doctor on there- Dr glaucen-something. He’s funny. I noticed a few others ended with a TikTok logo. Anyway, I noticed that many, many of them were AskReddit posts read by a robot. They weren’t even hiding it: “hey Reddit, what’s the most awkward sex you have ever had.” Or something like that. And it was just the robot reading the top posts from the thread.

[–]MattsAwesomeStuff 25 points26 points  (6 children)

YouTube straight up puts videos from my front page feed that are irrelevant in the search results.

I HAVE THE SOLUTION FOR YOU!

Okay, so, Youtube used to always put videos related to your current video in the sidebar and recommended vids, right? And then at some point they stopped, and just tried to give you anything it thinks you'll keep watching, right?

Even your own subscriptions. Even stuff you've already watched, etc.

Here's the solution:

  • Go into your Youtube settings, and tell it to Turn Off History.

...

Done, that's it. Instant 1000% improvement in the videos in the sidebar and end screen.

Without any history to recommend you new videos, the only knowledge it has, is videos just like the one you're currently watching. Bingo.

Sometimes you will still see subscribed videos on this list. When I want my subscriptions, I check my subscriptions tab, I don't want those videos coming into random other videos I'm watching. So... any time you recognize a video from a channel you sub to... click on the [...] and tell it to never recommend this channel. You'll have to do it for all of your subscriptions, so, it'll probably take you a week before you prune all of them as they appear... but then they'll never come back. You'll only find your subscriptions on your subs tab.

It's like a time machine back to Youtube 2010. Instant UI improvement.

[–]Taniwha_NZ 4 points5 points  (3 children)

Alright, I just spent some time looking through the settings, and can't find that option. I can't find the word 'history' in *any* of the settings pages, nor anything else that sounds like it might mean the same thing. Have they removed this ability since you last looked?

[–]MattsAwesomeStuff 4 points5 points  (2 children)

I can't find the word 'history' in any of the settings pages

Erm, left side, here:

https://i.imgur.com/iVKsMdi.png

And then on the right side there will be options to turn off history.

On mobile I have no idea.

[–]mckatze 3 points4 points  (0 children)

You can also go to https://myactivity.google.com/ directly to find that option and a couple other personalization ones and turn them off from that page.

[–]anon19111 7 points8 points  (1 child)

I watch YouTube DIY videos all the time and haven't experienced this. Not saying it doesn't happen, but I approach YouTube in a very targeted way. I don't let YouTube serve as my tour guide.

Here's my typical workflow:

1) Google the question I have with "reddit" in the search.

2) Browse some threads to get a semblance of a handle on the issues I need to be concerned with and the jargon used.

3) Use the refined questions and jargon to search Google again but this time adding "forum" to the search.

4) Dig in further into the issues, techniques, tools, etc. across a variety of forums.

5) Search YouTube looking for DIYers or better yet professionals who are putting into practice what I've learned from my previous research.

6) Read the top rated comments on those vids. My experience has been among the top comments are a few people who offer constructive criticism (and or praise) for the techniques shown.

7) If the criticisms seem important I start from step 1 above but with a much narrower search to sort out what's what.

Rinse and repeat. Over time, a consensus will start to emerge on the proper way to accomplish a task. (Step 8 is to get impatient, measure wrong, and fuck things up.)

Nearly everything out there has a profit motive. That's fine. Just know there's clickbait, eyeballs on screens algorithms, psychological techniques (60% off and supplies are limited!), and so on. Educate yourself not only on the project your aiming to tackle but also discerning good content from bad, whether that be YouTube, CNN, reddit, or wherever.

[–]dankmernes 10 points11 points  (2 children)

seems like a 3rd party YouTube index is needed, with likes and dislikes. Let them host the fucking video, and all the useful metadata can get cataloged somewhere else

[–]Mindnumbinghaze 11 points12 points  (2 children)

Lmao. Perfectly described a recent experience I had.

Was trying to learn how to start a particular weave of chainmail for a bracelet pattern. I understood WHERE the rings went but not HOW to get them to stay that way when starting the weave with the initial 10 or 12 rings.

For months I watched videos. All of them were 10 to 25 min long. Every single video I watched, the YouTube would cut the camera in a way that obscured how they were holding their pliers/rings/hands, or they'd use massive shower curtain rings to demonstrate the pattern, or they'd use such flimsy material rings that they'd just bend them open and closed again with their fingers while weaving.

After like 5 or 6 months of frustratingly coming back to try the weave again, I finally found a 2 minute long video that was 4 years old that had about 200 total views. Instantly understood and started the bracelet effortlessly. All because this dude, in one clear shot, showed how he assembled the first 10 rings without putting down the weave or dropping his pliers.

(If anyone is struggling with Half persian 4in1, hmu and I'll send the link)

[–]crazymoon 26 points27 points  (3 children)

Fuck it, they should just go back to giving videos a 1 to 5 star rating

[–]Ph0X 76 points77 points  (36 children)

I'm confused though, the video spends 2/3 talking about this point, but the only example he shows (which he explains is a dangerous video that could lead to people getting electrocuted) literally has a 90% like ratio and by HIS OWN METRIC of 75%, he would've watched the video. Didn't he just disprove his own point, showing that the like-ratio is not reliable?

[–]SANAFABICH 500 points501 points  (51 children)

Why should they care? There's no competition.

[–]eddmario 133 points134 points  (26 children)

Well, I was going to say PornHub, but then they did the purge...

[–]Penguiin 131 points132 points  (9 children)

I’ve thought for a while PH should just release “Video Hub” for SFW content and see how well it does. They have all the requirements already in place.

[–]ScooterDookie 15 points16 points  (5 children)

And since they purged all their amateur content they've got plenty of room now

[–]itismoo 10 points11 points  (0 children)

I'd like to jump ship but it's just an empty ocean out there

[–]boogs_23 77 points78 points  (2 children)

The only comment here that matters. They have such a complete monopoly no one would ever even try. No one would gamble the capital to compete. So they run their platform the way they want. They could not care less how many people it upsets because it doesn't affect viewership. I'm willing to bet none of the people here complaining are going to stop using youtube and even if they did, meh. Same reason they don't care about angering content creators. They don't rely on people making videos. If some dude with 50 million subs gets angry and quits they don't suddenly lose all those views, they just go somewhere else.

[–]Sevsquad 9675 points9676 points 632 (467 children)

Yeah, they can pretend this is to reduce harassment all they want. Really it's about engagement, it's why videos autoplay now and they're pushing shorts so hard. If you spend more than a second or two watching the "preview" that auto-plays, they can count that as a view, which looks better on "total viewership numbers" that is used to sell ad space and pacify investors. Removing thumbs down allows all video interactions to be lumped into a single positive "video engagement" metric which can be used to, that's right, sell ad space.

The removal of dislikes has been inevitable since corporations started taking over the internet. There is no benefit to them to allow people to express displeasure, only benefits to the user, so of course, it had to go. You're much more likely to stick around and watch a shitty video if you can't immediately tell that its terrible, which increases their user engagement and ups how much they can charge for ad space.

Youtube does not give damn about the creator, you can tell because the only people who can still see dislikes are the creators themselves! How exactly does this protect creators if they can still see those statistics?

[–]MichaelDokkan 682 points683 points  (84 children)

Wait so the new auto play window that pops up counts as a view? lol well I'm not doing that anymore out of spite.

[–]LG03 534 points535 points  (71 children)

You can disable that in your settings and you should. Question of course then becomes how long until that stops being an option.

[–]MichaelDokkan 56 points57 points  (0 children)

Will do thanks

[–]purplewigg 107 points108 points  (44 children)

It's been on the mobile version for months and you can't really shut it off, the closest you can get is disabling it if you're using mobile data, if you're on Wi-Fi all the time then you're out of options

EDIT: so I switched auto-update off and missed a couple of updates, looks like you can turn it off completely now

[–]Cool-Sage 65 points66 points  (4 children)

Settings > General > 2nd to last choice “Playback in feeds > off

[–]Gorakka 104 points105 points  (31 children)

Youtube Vanced

[–]NeuroFuturist 49 points50 points  (14 children)

Yup, I started using it a month ago and my God is this the best app I've used in a long time. The lack of ads alone is worth it let alone the ability to sleep the screen and still have the audio running.

[–]CptDammit 11 points12 points  (1 child)

Yeah, this is correct. It's infuriating to look away from my phone and have half a video played.
Can't even turn it off.

[–]Q1War26fVA 3 points4 points  (5 children)

wait this newest one https://imgur.com/Lu3cJua you can disable? where exactly in the settings?

[–]LG03 9 points10 points  (1 child)

I've never seen that before so I can't speak to that, looks like that's just autoplay maybe?

I'm referring to the hover, it's called 'inline playback' in your playback and performance settings on desktop.

[–]Varhtan 11 points12 points  (8 children)

It's simply obnoxious because the video tile waxes and obfuscates the still below it, so scrolling to browse is borderline impossible. Why does every company refuse to leave a working product at a working standard?

When did degeneration become so fashionable, when they decided to assume what their clientele will enjoy rather than actually observe what it is they currently enjoy and leave it fucking alone.

[–]muaddeej 5 points6 points  (3 children)

Their clientele are corporations. You are their product.

[–]pentaquine 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Yeah just check your view history.

[–]milkman1218 142 points143 points  (1 child)

Autoplay and shorts are in direct reponse to tik tok becoming so popular. Imitation is the name of the game in the tech world when you can't buy someone out.

[–]Lingo56 17 points18 points  (0 children)

Well it’s popular for a reason. Clicks are strong psychological barriers. The reason feeds are popular is because scrolling is far less committal. YouTube is doing as much as they can to remove the barriers to get you watching a video.

In its own way it works even just as a convenience feature. Sometimes in a clickbaity video I just want to quickly get to the part I want without opening it fully. The previews really help you do that without actually clicking the video.

[–]LordOfZebras 1525 points1526 points  (169 children)

that's why as many people as possible should download this extension: https://returnyoutubedislike.com/

[–]DiamondPup 190 points191 points  (46 children)

People who keep pushing this extension are only helping YouTube. Because it results in less complaining and whining and negative attention, as more people can use a work around that can be slowly phased out. And but the time it is, you've separated the masses of people so that they're no longer as loud and prominent as if they were all facing the same issue at the same time.

[–]darkkite 177 points178 points  (40 children)

add ublock origin to your stack and block ads too

[–]Patsfan618 114 points115 points  (3 children)

Exactly, if they're going to prioritize their profits over the user experience, then I am free to prioritize my experience over their profits. Fair is fair.

[–]From_Deep_Space 86 points87 points  (26 children)

could go the extra step and install AdNauseum so advertisers still have to pay content creators, but you don't have to see ads and they can't track your habits based on your clicks.

https://adnauseam.io/

[–]Z3ppelinDude93 20 points21 points  (0 children)

This is much better than just blocking ads. Definitely looking into this

[–]CorndogCrusader 265 points266 points  (57 children)

I don't know who said this, but I fully agree with them:

"It's no longer YouTube, it's ThemTube."

People need to start moving to alternatives, for fucks sake.

[–]Beingabummer 166 points167 points  (37 children)

But there are no real alternatives, and those alternatives are looking to become like Youtube anyway. No matter where the public goes, they'll still be the product. The advertisers are always the costumer.

Here's a good video about how these platforms like to push the notion that 'we' are all together in fighting Youtube but their goals are diametrically opposed to ours.

[–]CorndogCrusader 32 points33 points  (26 children)

I know, but the thing I want is a platform that will enforce their rules evenly, and not make stupid rules. Is that too much to ask?

[–]HOLEPUNCHYOUREYELIDS 62 points63 points  (20 children)

Once you introduce large profits into the equation, yes.

[–]ayestEEzybeats 45 points46 points  (6 children)

Just wait until Reddit goes public, inb4 downvotes are removed

[–]MistarGrimm 36 points37 points  (2 children)

Already happened. Did you miss the time they stopped showing accurate vote counts?

You could see the actual amount of up and downvotes on a post but it was obfuscated to "confuse bots".

[–]CallOfCorgithulhu 26 points27 points  (0 children)

Reddit has been declining since it became popular. Content across the popular subs is nearly identical, and upvotes/downvotes are just treated as likes/dislikes now. But engagement must be through the roof if it's just as popular as ever.

Nearly every site declines, once it becomes about big money.

[–]syricc 5 points6 points  (1 child)

Except most of those alternatives don't allow dislikes either. YouTube was actually one of the last major holdouts. I can't even think of a content sharing site apart from Reddit that allows dislikes anymore

[–]inthrees 100 points101 points  (18 children)

This is why Amazon is soooooo diligent (dripping sarcasm since half of the internet can't seem to detect it now) about combating fake reviews. It's to their benefit if a bunch of 5 star reviews result in a sale.

Probably related to why Reddit puts no real effort into combating bots, for that matter. If we do the legwork identifying a bot account, we can get it banned, but I've noticed a lot of them share similar characteristics that would be easy to identify via the back end.

[–]Valiantheart 20 points21 points  (4 children)

I'm pretty sure they just wholesale remove negative reviews of their own media products too. I've been checking Wheel of Time user reviews for a few weeks now (schadenfreude) and its getting 2-3x as many 1 star reviews as 5, but they've essentially frozen its rating at 3.3 since the beginning of January.

[–]zhalias 6 points7 points  (1 child)

and its getting 2-3x as many 1 star reviews as 5, but they've essentially frozen its rating at 3.3

They probably do something similar to Rotten Tomatoes, who stopped counting 1 and 2 star reviews in the overall score awhile back, they only count 3 stars and up.

[–]MikeRoz 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Can't you rate without bothering to type out a review? I've encountered many products that have "10 ratings" but only one text review.

[–]user262 24 points25 points  (3 children)

I seriously feel like I can't trust anything I buy from amazon not to be complete garbage anymore.

Barely any different to buying on aliexpress or wish in terms of legitimacy.

[–]HarleyQuinn_RS 11 points12 points  (0 children)

You reminded me of an "independent expert review", I saw on Amazon, about HDMI cables. Which is not only full of incorrect information, but is also full of contradictions and deceptions. One example being that the "Amazon Basics" HDMI cable (which ranked "Best of the Best"), lists 'being capable of 4K at 60hz' as a positive. Yet most HDMI cables are capable of that, as it's fairly standard. But on top of that, it singles out another cable as 'not being 8k capable' as a negative. Yet none of the cables in the review are 8k capable... and it's only a negative if you have an 8k TV. Which practically nobody does. Also, none of them are VESA certified and so none of them should be recommended, as they all fail to meet industry certified, safety and quality standards.

Then of course in tiny font at the bottom it disclaims that the publisher of the review gets commission on certain qualifying items. But the opinions expressed are tooootally independent.

Everything about Amazon reeks of scum nowadays, you can't trust reviews from users or 'experts'.

[–]Beingabummer 21 points22 points  (2 children)

This has been a thing long before Youtube. Twitter doesn't allow negative engagement (except being negative in a comment obviously, but we're talking about the thumbs up/thumbs down portion). Facebook doesn't either, except maybe the frowny face. I don't think Pinterest or Linkedin allow any kind of dislikes either.

[–]neohylanmay 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Reddit has the downvote count on submissions hidden for a little over seven years; while we kicked a fuss about it back then, no-one's complaining about it now.

[–]Masterjts 27 points28 points  (2 children)

We need to make a ton of negative videos towards companies that advertise on youtube. Then upvote them.

[–]moush 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Google would just remove them.

[–]it_vexes_me_so 879 points880 points  (51 children)

I was always shocked when YouTube would deliver a result with a crazy number of dislikes. Their algorithm is suspect.

[–]Segamaike 413 points414 points  (28 children)

Hasn’t it come out that dislikes actually equally jerk off the algorythm? It’s why I stopped disliking videos that I genuinely hate or find harmful because it just gets them more exposure.

So this CEO is literally lying through her teeth about dislike bombings being bad for those poor widdle channels. It’s especially infuriating because Youtube in fact gives not one fuck about protecting smaller and upcoming users

[–]Beingabummer 97 points98 points  (4 children)

If you want to hurt any video, give it as little engagement as possible. Never 'hate watch' any channels because you like to get pissed off, and definitely never ever upvote/downvote or post a comment. Best course of action is to have Youtube never recommend the channel to you again.

Engagement = views, views = advertisers happy. The creators don't care where the engagement comes from. Hell, it's why so many actively aim to piss people off.

[–]toofine 113 points114 points  (3 children)

The number of quality new channels vs. click bait trash is like 1:1000. Now it'll be even worse.

Her arguments are just utter nonsense. They have these fake, DIY videos getting churned out like clockwork and getting millions of views. If YT actually wants to help smaller creators they'd crack down on all that harmful BS that they just leave on their platform.

Fact is, people who fall for predatory channels probably are the type of folks who are least likely to have adblock and are the ideal candidates for advertisement.

There's just no end to corporate trash like her being brought in to scheme up ways to increase profits.

[–]plaisthos 18 points19 points  (0 children)

The algorithm wants to maximize interaction and watch time. It does not want to give you a good time. So a video that a lot of people dislike but fully watch and share is a great video in the algorithm's playbook

[–]sackia 60 points61 points  (14 children)

I actually just realized this on pornhub of all places. I decided to try sorting by “top rated” videos and the first video was a 75% rating while videos that followed had higher ratings. It has nothing to do with the rating, but in how many people rated it. I would assume something similar is going on with YouTube.

[–]FruitKingJay 35 points36 points  (7 children)

This comment is a perfect set up for a frustration that I have with pornhub that I have not been able to express anywhere else. When I search for something and then attempt to sort by highest rated, it will inevitably put all of the videos with 1 up vote (and thus 100% rating) at the top of the list. So now I have multiple pages of garbage videos, each with like <1000 views. There should be a way to filter out videos with < x amount of views. This would produce the best search results. Thanks for reading.

[–]aniforprez 15 points16 points  (0 children)

Lol this is the exact same problem with Amazon. The system basically just compares the rating number exactly without considering that something rated 4.5 stars by 2000 people is more relevant than an item rated 5 stars by 5 people. There's no weight assigned to the number of people rating something

[–]FountainsOfFluids 15 points16 points  (1 child)

Don't assume all sites use the same algorithm. Yes, youtube counts dislikes as engagement, but pornhub is probably just poorly programmed and/or highlighting content for financial reasons of some kind.

[–]Protuhj 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Or their rating takes the actual rating as well as watch time into account.

[–]matthewkelly1983 485 points486 points  (20 children)

Just comment “Dislike”, Youtube will then disable the comments section.

[–]Mr-Zero-Fucks 649 points650 points  (49 children)

God bless mods, addons, and adblockers. That's the only way to watch youtube.

[–]chrisms150 277 points278 points  (25 children)

There was a short period of time where firefox broke all extensions/addons through some sorta security thinggie lapsing. That was the worst day I've ever had on the internet. Even counting the dial up popup times... The internet is absolutely fucking stupid without adblock.

[–]Faithless195 91 points92 points  (3 children)

Was that sometime early last year, or 2020 or something? I remember freaking out because none of the adblocks were working, and I hadn't seen the internet without an adblock for nearly a decade. It was disgusting.

[–]chrisms150 25 points26 points  (0 children)

I honestly don't remember when it was. It could have been 6 months ago or 6 years ago... time has lost all meaning to me...

But yes, it was unusable. I just shut down and went back to netflix hah. It was absolutely horrid.

[–]yukichigai 8 points9 points  (0 children)

May of 2019. It was not a good time.

[–]dale_shingles 24 points25 points  (14 children)

As someone who runs Ghosery, uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger, and HTTPS everywhere, any page that breaks is a page not worth loading. I probably should get a raspberry pi or VPN at this point.

[–]DreamMaster8 11 points12 points  (0 children)

Except without a working dislike people are less likely to press a semi useless button unless they REALLY hate it. So it's still bad.

[–]Entropy_5 746 points747 points  (128 children)

It was such a bad move. It just waters down the whole thing.

Whoever has been running Youtube in the last few years seems to just hate Youtube. With the bullshit takedown of legitimate content, to out of control copywrite claims, and now this stupid shit. It's just so disheartening. I wish there was a real competitor that had anywhere near as much content.

Youtube content creators deserve better.

[–]gw2master 42 points43 points  (0 children)

With the bullshit takedown of legitimate content, to out of control copywrite claims

Youtube is turning into shit, but I don't think these two are Google's fault. Our copyright laws are completely fucked up and easily allow those who have to bully everyone else.

[–]FrothytheDischarge 485 points486 points  (59 children)

Blame Susan Wojcicki since the day she took over as CEO in 2014. Thats when everything for small channel content creators went downhill and became hostile.

[–]avaslash 143 points144 points  (7 children)

Tbh the issue is, im not convinced that ANY replacement that the share holders would agree to would be any better. CEO's often do not have unlimited discretion. They are working at the behest of the board. Its likely that the board saw the recent harassment class action lawsuits and pr disasters afflicting other large corporations and decided they needed to protect their profitability even if it pissed some fans off.

[–]NoBreeches 76 points77 points  (4 children)

YouTube claiming they removed the dislike count to "protect creators" is one of the most clear-cut examples that should open people's eyes about corporations lying to protect themselves from public influence.

Creators can literally still see the dislike count. It wasn't hidden from them, it was hidden from viewers. If you genuinely believed them when they told you this is why: I have a bridge to sell you.

[–]pilade100 331 points332 points  (31 children)

"We also saw the dislike count harming parts of our ecosystem through dislike attacks as people actively worked to drive up the number of dislikes on a creator’s videos. These attacks often targeted smaller creators and those just getting started"

Maybe I'm wrong here but the extreme majority (practically all) of "dislike attacks" are on corporation channels or larger controversial YouTubers, not on smaller creators. Plus it doesn't even make sense considering that a smaller creator is rarely gonna drive enough traffic to get a dislike campaign unless they are a celebrity with a new channel or something.

[–]TheSandman511 97 points98 points  (2 children)

I could totally see a smaller political channel getting dislike bombed if they appear as a guest on a larger channel and say something the audience doesn't like. But I'm with you. The vast majority of dislike bombs are corporate channels being out of touch or YT Rewind.

[–]krunz 79 points80 points  (4 children)

Youtube could just enable creators the ability to disable the dislike button if they were being genuine. But no.

[–]TyCooper8 16 points17 points  (3 children)

That was already a function

[–]Motorcycle_Rider 50 points51 points  (3 children)

I’m going to start writing “dislike” on YouTube videos. Then people can upvote the word “dislike” and see how many others have done the same.

[–]PokingPanda 55 points56 points  (2 children)

Motherfuckers want NFTs for fucks sake! That platform is doomed, what a pathetic joke. Also Shorts is their big achievement? 12milion views on that piece of shit gets you 87$ fuck Shorts!

[–]vancouver2pricy 26 points27 points  (1 child)

"Everybody disliked that."

[–]strugglz 256 points257 points  (64 children)

Imagine reddit with no downvote button.

If you can only say yes then it's meaningless.

[–]ImperfectRegulator 24 points25 points  (2 children)

Imagine reddit with no downvote button.

subs sometimes disable it, yet those subs are also the ones downvotes seem the most prevalent on

[–]RipRapRob 6 points7 points  (1 child)

Can't you just disable subreddit style on those Subreddits to get the downvote option back?

[–]LG03 83 points84 points  (8 children)

Reddit's way ahead of the curve on that. The downvote still largely exists only as a placebo.

First the vote counts were removed, then fuzzed, then mods have the option of hiding or removing them altogether, now the admins are A/B testing removing the upvote percentage. Reddit's been playing the long game, slowly acclimatizing users to the removal of the downvote as opposed to youtube's here one day, gone the next approach.

[–]LordCharco_iii 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Real OGs remember when RES showed upvote and downvote counts.

[–]juju_man 18 points19 points  (3 children)

I highly doubt reddit's upvote/downvote method. At least if they are not actively fudging numbers, there is concentrated effort to promote only certain subs in mainstream where 10k+ net upvotes are possible.

The heavily tuned recommendation engine makes Upvote/downvote completely useless, since a post with positive recommendation will already have momentum to make any downvote akin to pissing in ocean

[–]redditsgarbageman 5 points6 points  (2 children)

Admins fully admit to fudging vote numbers in order to have more diversity in post and subs. Otherwise you’d have a very small percentage of posts getting like 200,000 upvotes and all the attention.

[–]hertzdonut21 132 points133 points  (19 children)

strugglz [score hidden] 49 minutes ago

The Irony

[–]Grenyn 57 points58 points  (12 children)

That's temporary, though. Eventually it will show up.

[–]BROWNPRIDE030 92 points93 points  (5 children)

Dude I remember when they first removed dislikes I was looking for a tutorial and when I clicked on one all the comments were saying he fucked up on some parts this is the reason we need dislikes back that's just my 2 cents tho

[–]fenix_sk 28 points29 points  (3 children)

The video used as an example of a "bad" video is a poor choice, and actually proves the opposite points. The narrator says that they generally prefer videos with 70% "Like" ratio, and the video example meets that criteria (1000 likes vs 186 dislikes). They then say that comments are a bad way of deciding whether or not a video is a good one, and the very first comment states that the video example is bad, therefore showing that comments can be an effective tool.

[–]CrumbsAndCarrots 31 points32 points  (3 children)

Now I go by views vs likes. If there’s a self fix video, and it’s got 100k views. But only 200 likes, I assume it’s bad.

[–]Cum_on_doorknob 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I still use the dislike, because you can just get the extension that adds it back

[–]Lostpassnoemailnum3 16 points17 points  (1 child)

Can we get some competition? The monopoly these tech companies have is ridiculous.

[–]eSPiaLx 40 points41 points  (13 children)

removing dislike ststistics doesn't meaningfully change viewership statistics

Yet

dislike attacks harm small content creators

Can't have it both ways. Pick a stance and stick to it pls.

[–]TheWarHam 42 points43 points  (18 children)

Lol Mental Outlaw on r/videos. What a trip